Hacker News: phendrenad2

New comment by phendrenad2 in "I think they are lying to you [video]"

phendrenad2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 16:07:19 +0000

Seems hyperbolic to me. The video is about them "hurting people" by convincing foolish CEOs to replace their workers with AI (and the CEOs and investors are also being hurt by this). You're talking about some scenario where faking AI competence makes AI somehow actually competent.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "I think they are lying to you [video]"

phendrenad2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:41:57 +0000

What does this have to do with the video?

New comment by phendrenad2 in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""

phendrenad2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 01:17:29 +0000

Reminded me of this quote:

"Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so." - Robert Heinlein

In this case, the gym buddy doesn't think that she's an expert in the other field, but dismisses it as something ChatGPT can do with ease.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime"

phendrenad2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 01:08:01 +0000

Yes and this post is the remedy. We need to point out the privacy issue, and also point out that it won't do what people want.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "I think they are lying to you [video]"

phendrenad2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:23:00 +0000

Please please tell us so we're prepared. sad puppy eyes

New comment by phendrenad2 in "H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 23:43:19 +0000

I don't really understand the hypothetical problems here. "The copyright office head would be a presidential appointee, which could make the copyright office more political". I mean, I guess? Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law? But they don't enforce copyright law right now...

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Mmorpg World of ClaudeCraft, vibe coded with Fable 5"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:42:31 +0000

Impressive. Don't listen to anyone who says otherwise, I don't see them running a fun little browser MMO.

Some people will see this and think "wow, in 5 more years I'll actually be able to make World of Warcraft". Some will see this and think "Wow, I can make World of Warcraft now with 1/100th the cost and engineers". Neither of these thoughts are right, though. The reality is more like "Wow, someone can make a game 10 times as good as World of Warcraft for the same[1] cost and number of engineers".

[1] - roughly $63 million, 5 years, 60 engineers

New comment by phendrenad2 in "A dumpster arrived behind my university's library"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:58:09 +0000

I think librarians tend to become creatures-that-shovel-books. Librarians come to think of books as this sort of continuum, an ooze that they just pipe from one stack to another. Housing the books and following the proper procedures becomes the important thing, not the words on the pages.

But that's completely the wrong attitude. Books are NOT all created equal. A schlocky romance novel is not equivalent to a book by Kierkegaard, or Vonnegut, or Plath, despite the fact that they are just a bunch of leaves between bindings with an ISBN stamped on the back.

So it's telling when the top comment on a story about professors fighting to save books from being carelessly thrown away is that there exists a basement full of romance novels. The narrator is faulty in this story.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:41:50 +0000

Can this be a quarterly Ask HN?

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Malware developers added nuclear and biological weapons text to to their spyware"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:38:28 +0000

It's a marketing gimmick.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime"

phendrenad2 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:48:29 +0000

Let me give you an analogy: Someone keeps blaring an airhorn outside your window at 4am. It's making it difficult for you to sleep. The government, in their bountiful wisdom, decides to hold an emergency meeting, and agrees to pass a law that people need to show an ID to buy an airhorn. You're appalled. This is an invasion of privacy! You protest outside of city hall. You try to get some of your neighbors onboard, but find that they're already protesting! Their protest is demanding that the government do something about the annoying airhorns.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys"

phendrenad2 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:36:23 +0000

This is an example of a spandrel, an evolutionary maladaptation that becomes self-reinforcing. The chain of events is as follows: Shaving 1.5" off the top of the keyboard and removing a row of media buttons saves the keyboard company $2 or something. So one budget keyboard company does it. Other companies see this and think "oh, they did market research and realized that people WANT a smaller keyboard more than they want media buttons" and suddenly you can't find a lightweight bluetooth keyboard with separate media buttons. The keyboard industry is blissfully unaware of their mistake until a brave soul named Dan Q blogs about it.

This kind of thing is usually quickly corrected, but in a niche like bluetooth keyboards with a touchpad (seriously how many use those other than nerds with jellyfin or a raspberry pi)

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM"

phendrenad2 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:20:16 +0000

This effect plays around again and again. Someone makes something for the public good, and corporations show up and take advantage of it. Basically the story of FOSS too, when you think about it.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Who's the smartest corvid?"

phendrenad2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:24:01 +0000

Oh, crows are WAY smarter than that. If one tried to drop a stone on you, it was because it didn't like your online comments.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Hacking for Defense Stanford 2026 – Lessons Learned Presentations"

phendrenad2 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:59:35 +0000

Lesson learned: California, and all the universities within, are liberal on the surface, but deeply right-wing in the halls of power. Once you understand this, the whole state and its lack of progress on progressive issues makes sense.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Show HN: GentleOS – A pair of hobby OSes for vintage 32-bit and 16-bit PCs"

phendrenad2 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:34:08 +0000

Love the photos of it running on 386/486 laptops. So cute!

New comment by phendrenad2 in "Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee"

phendrenad2 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:15:04 +0000

Because in America, the boomers' retirement accounts are partially funded by insane college tuition (through insane college services and textbooks), so college has essentially become a guaranteed debt trap that gives you a lottery ticket to maybe be in the top 1%.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "India's surprise baby bust"

phendrenad2 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:14:56 +0000

Actually I was replying to someone who said that we weren't reaching equilibrium, and I contended that we are. I said nothing about "our current economic system can’t handle it".

New comment by phendrenad2 in "The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy"

phendrenad2 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:09:32 +0000

Ah, that makes sense. Today, people are pulled in a million different directions by targeted misinformation, trying to rally them to be unwilling soldiers for some malignant cause. Before, when people were primarily uninformed, only one malefactor could pull on them at once. Thank you for the clarification. I guess things have improved then, since people can't really devote themselves fully to any noxious cause, and have to time-share.

New comment by phendrenad2 in "The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy"

phendrenad2 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:08:06 +0000

Speaking of eyes, I can hardly believe mine when I see HN downvote posts like this. We all trust the government now, or something? Absolutely wild.